Directed by:
Mike Bender
Starring:
Ben Affleck …. Jack Giamoro
Rebecca Romijn …. Nina Giamoro
Gina Gershon …. Arlene Kreiner
Mike Binder …. Morty
Kal Penn …. Alan Fineberg
Adam Goldberg …. Phil Balow
Jerry O’Connell …. David Lilly
Amber Valletta …. Brynn Lilly
John Cleese …. Dr. Primkin
Samuel Ball …. Jimmy Dooley
Bai Ling …. Barbi Ling
Media 8 Entertainment presents Man About Town. Written by Mike Bender. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated R (for language, some sexual content and a scene of violence). Released on DVD: February 13, 2007. Available at Amazon.com.
Poor Affleck, he finally gets his career going down the right path again with his performance as George Reeves in Hollywoodland, and then his previous poor excuse of a film Man About Town gets a release because of his recent upsurge in popularity. You see, this film has been sitting on the shelf for upwards of two years now, with not a single distributor wanting to give it a full theatrical release. So it’s been collecting dust until Ben won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival; that’s when people cared enough about it to – at the very least – put it out on DVD. To most people this will make them think Hollywoodland was just a fluke, when in fact the guy finally is moving back to the leading man we once assumed he would become. But will this recent release hurt his career upswing?
Super agent Jack Giamoro has been at the top of his game for quite some time now, controlling some of the most popular writing talent working today. When Phil Barlow, his top client, is just about to re-sign with the agency Jack discovers his wife and Phil have been having an affair behind his back. When he tells his other board members about dropping Phil, they’re not too pleased. Phil was a big fish for the company and his new contract would have a nice back end for them. So they’re doing everything in their power to persuade Jack in to keeping him with the company.
In hopes of swaying them in his favor, Jack goes after a hot new writer by the name of David Lilly to replace Phil as a client. But it’s taking a longer than usual to lock him into a deal. And while all of this is going on, Jack has found himself signed up in a writing course in hopes of finding out why he’s fallen on such hard times, both personally and professionally. The course requires him to keep a running daily journal to peel away the layers to try to find out what’s been holding him back in life.
After a while he gets a bit more acclimated with what he writes in the journal (no more mentions of what a great swimmer his wife is) and starts to share certain bits of information that could prove he and his associates lied under oath at a former court trial – which could bring his entire agency to its knees. So, naturally, the journal gets stolen by a bitter writer by the name of Barbie who has had no less than ten scripts (of which include Chinese Girl on a Killing Spree and Planet Without a Jew) turned down by Jack and his fellow agents over the past five years. and she’s going to the presses with the journal’s contents writing up a full expose. Now Jack needs to get it back before everything he built comes crumbling down.
We’re never given a reason to care about what is happening with the characters, and it takes so long for the story to actually kick in that, when it comes, the term anticlimactic doesn’t even begin to do it justice. On top of that we’re given more characters then we can count when only several actually matter to the plot – taking up time simply to be there and supply a moderate amount of humor, but mostly exposition and plot advancement.
The script may be the largest contributor to the movie’s downfall. At times it feels like the pilot to a TV series that never got off the ground. There is a very inconsistent balance between drama and comedy making for a very uneven viewing experience. Like when Jack feels shocked and appalled when his wife confesses to her infidelity, yet, within the first five minutes of the movie, Jack admits to suspecting her of such.
Not to mention the amount of backstory that feels forced and unnecessary to the plot. Seeing Jack’s past as a chubby kid or when he and his associates ransack their former employers before starting their own agency has no bearing on the story. Things that could easily be summed up with voiceover narration, but the footage more times than not derails Man About Town as a whole. Other parts that feel like pointless padding is Jack’s father who appears to be there for no reason whatsoever. It’s like Binder took several hundred pages and condensed them all in to one picture without bothering to cut the fat.
Another technical aspect that didn’t flow right was the editing. Man About Town features split screens (which are usually of the exact same image) that are better suited for shows like 24 and CGI shots of the city used as segues from scene to scene. These are as pointless as they sound. The movie also features one of the most forceful musical score’s I’ve heard in quite some time. It tends to destroy most of the somber moments with over the top music – trying to force you into caring more than the scene requires. Misplaced and miscalculated through and through.
Affleck tries here, but his performance is only as good as the material he has to work with. The majority of his work is reading off a very flat narration. Romijn is perhaps the best performance overall but the aforementioned musical score destroys her work by pounding viewers over the head to feel sad. John Cleese as the class instructor steals the show with the minimal screen time he has. The only exception would be Bai Ling as the psycho screenwriter who comes off as a terrible cliche. Sadly most of the actual talent the actors posses are waisted with meandering dialogue and less than stellar story structure.
At times Binder seems to be calling back to his Mind of the Married Man series in terms of the male character interaction, but hardly ever captures the charm of his 2004 offering The Upside of Anger. No character is given much time to simply slow down for a moment and give us a reason to care for what they do or what happens to them. I have a feeling that there are about twenty minutes of material somewhere that do a great job of filling in the huge gaping holes in the movies plot, but this final 100 minute cut simply goes from one thing to another without establishing a single one.
Sadly, the film has potential to be something very good, but drops the ball at every turn. But that statement can be applied to every movie, almost every story always shows promise. It’s why they get greenlit in the first place. Here they seemed to take a simple story of a man losing sight of who he was and just added more and more to the plot making the main one not only insignificant, but not worthwhile. And once that is done the whole movie is blown to smithereens.
Video:
(Presented in 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen)
While not necessarily setting a new benchmark for video presentation, this single disc release maintains a very clear and crisp image. There are a few instances of artifacts but the image on a whole is solid throughout the running time.
Audio:
(English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and 2.0)
Given the type of film we’re dealing with you’d expect the audio to be very front heavy with little to no action in the rear channels. And you would be correct. The movie, which is heavily dialogue driven, rarely leaves the front speakers only occasionally using the back ones for the score.
Extras:
Visual Journaling (11:40) – Almost the entire runtime of this featurette is nothing but the cast talking about what a wonderful director and actor Binder was while shooting the film. It quickly wears out its welcome by around the four minute mark and after that just feels to drag on continuously. This is the defining example of a puff piece.
Talk to my Agent (3:03) – A short extra that has the cast talking about their roles portraying Hollywood agents. There are a few bits of information here that are worth listening to, particularly Kal Penn’s final word on how difficult it is to find the perfect agent, but it’s all edited in a sound bite-type manor with the piece ending before it even starts.
Deleted Scenes (11:57) – Some of these are your every day garden variety deleted scenes that should stay out of the final cut; others actually could have added to the film. Most seem to continue a dropped subplot where Jack has Barbie’s boyfriend trapped in the trunk of his car. Other alternate scenes are also here but are hit or miss depending on the quality of the writing.
Bloopers (1:07) – When one think bloopers, they think on set shenanigans, not here. Instead we’re treated to bloopers from the behind the scenes material. Huh?
Rounding out the disc are trailers for Employee of the Month, The Bros., Unhitched, The U.S. vs. John Lennon, and Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girl.
